Tweets of the Week Special: Lance stripped bare

Another of our Tweets of the Week Specials: this one is around the news last week that Lance Armstrong was not going to contest the USADA’s case against him and therefore was stripped of all seven of his Tour de France titles. Armstrong has always been a polarising figure in cycling – it seems the people who hate him, hate him with a vengeance, whereas the people who love him would walk through fire for him.

As is my wont, I have gathered together tweets over the past few days that illustrate each side of this. There are some major themes here that are not necessarily to do with Armstrong himself, but the fall-out around him, which for me is much more interesting and important. As for my opinion on this, I don’t care so much about LA – I do care that people don’t let this drop with him. He didn’t do all this by himself so let’s make sure everyone’s participation is brought to light so that I don’t have to do another one of these in the next few years.

Overlord drops the bombshell

Anyone who has taken an interest in this case knows that @UCI_Overlord has been living and breathing this cause for years. Here’s when those who follow him (anyone who’s anyone) and those who have a crush on him (me) started to get wind of something big about to break.

Pro-Lance

Disregarding Matthew McConaughey and his petition to the White House (never thought that was going to go anywhere – who can take a man who never wears a shirt seriously?), Lance has garnered support from some strange corners of the galaxy, including Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner, and Darth Vader’s intern. As well as thousands of fans – don’t worry, I won’t list the thousands of tweets, just a few. (Pretty much everything else is Con-Lance …)

Comments from the peloton

It’s amazing. For a sport where the athletes have notoriously itchy twitter-fingers, there was a noticeable lack of comment on the Armstrong case. I trawled and trawled and came up with very little. Where was Bradley Wiggins, patron of the peloton, effing and blinding about doping? Where was Cavendish? I thought for sure I could count on David Millar – note his milquetoast response (tying it in with Neil Armstrong’s death even!) Granted, there are still cases in arbitration, including Johan Bruyneel‘s, who is still running RadioShack, so it’s kind of understandable that there wasn’t much talk from the RadioShack riders, but hey, guys, this is the biggest thing to happen to your sport … where are you?

How to solve a problem like Bruyneel

Personally, I think this is the most outrageous part of the whole damn thing: that Johan Bruyneel is allowed to continue to run a professional cycling team when he has these allegations hanging over his head. Surely there’s a way he could be suspended until the matter has been heard? But no. He’s still in charge. Here’s some of the take on this situation.

Random threads

To bring this to an end, here are some funny and/or thought-provoking tweets, in no particular order.

This whole thing is far from over so I’m sure we’ll have a few more TotW Specials in the next few months, particularly around the time of the arbitration hearings. Be assured, however, that I will be monitoring the twitterstream and pick out anything of interest to share with you all each week.